Henry Ford and the Secret Timewar pt 1
Three inches beneath the cracked, sun-parched surface of eastern Arizona a struggle between two civilizations raged. Unnamed by human minds, unknown to the world at large, ant colony XV-473’s swarm slowly broke down the defenses of ant colony LR-198. The claustrophobic tunnels were packed to the brim with pheromone excited drones, urged by their biological prerogative to rip apart anything unfamiliar. At the core of the defending ants’ tunnel system, nestled in her royal birthing chamber, the LR Queen continued to do the only thing she could; pump out pale pupa in support of the colony’s future. On the front lines, in those dark passages and anterooms clogged with writhing, bleeding carapaces, the savage law of attrition took its toll on the defenders. Monstrous soldiers with gargantuan heads dug their massive mandibles in the thoraxes of the worker defenders, who robotically continued their failing resistance. The queen watched mutely as the invaders swarmed in to her chamber; killer drones ripping asunder all in their way as they clawed sightless under the earth to their ultimate goal. She felt them envelop her, then a sharp stabbing, then nothing. Above the surface, the world continued on, wholly ignorant of the struggle.
Twenty five feet away on a Phoenix sidewalk, an old man lays broken on the hot pavement, beaten to death by a heavy-handed metaphor. As life fled his aged frame, a flash of realization flashed in Walter Balpherfarthing’s mind; his greatest life achievement, the meat tube on a stick, had been invented all along. Corndogs, of course. No wonder I had all that Dejavu. Thus died another great inventor On that day, Walter Balpherfarthing joined the company of such greats as the creator of Gobots and that one guy who also invented the telephone; the unsung heroes of history whom I can’t look up because I don’t have an internet connection right now. Nicola Tesla would be proud.
On a sweltering summer day in 1919, an upstart young Walter Balpherfarthing strode down a busy Detroit thoroughfare with a pocket full of dreams and a head full of lint, ready to make his fortune. Nothing could break his jolly stride that hot Detroit day as he went to his new job in the factory making cars. NICE POWER! He lay in to his factory work with passion, heart, and soul. Thus, he became noticed by a twisted visionary. As Henry Ford watched over his bustling factory floor, where model Ts accumulated parts like rolling snowballs as they passed through the facility, he saw not the ongoing march of human industry. He only saw waste. Inefficiency. Underproductive bags of hemoglobin. Every element of his factory was a carefully calibrated part in the whole. Each machine, conveyor belt, and worker had their own place, an integral part of the whole, each a cell in a lumbering behemoth that poops cars. Every day, the gates of this temple to industry would swing open, and hundreds of workers would stream in, labor for eight to forty seven hours, and either die or go home. This was not enough for Ford. Every night the factory would be silent, unused. He needed a solution. He needed to run his factory at peak efficiency. He could not afford human frailty.
As the frustrated Henry Ford looked out upon the factory floor, he watched a particular workman at the plebeians assembly line station. He lay in to his work with vigor and purpose, despite the fact that his work consisted of turning a single screw, over and over again, all day. This routine was so ingrained in the workers physical and mental being that he set about it with a tireless, almost mechanical animation. Henry Ford smiled. He now knew the future of the Ford Motor Empire.
